Displaced searches for Higgs decays and beyond

• Jessie Shelton (Yale University)
• Julia Shelton
• Julia (Jessie) Shelton (Rutgers University)

Room: Sunrise - WH11NE Long-lived particles (LLPs) present both major opportunities and major challenges at the LHC. To date, most LLP searches have functioned with small to negligible backgrounds, which has offered great reach, but as luminosities increase, and the scope of the LLP program expands, LLP searches will have to handle backgrounds that are notoriously difficult to calculate. I will talk about a new method of background estimation that enables searches with a single LLP, thus significantly extending the range of lifetimes testable at the LHC. I'll illustrate the technique using the highly motivated example of exotic Higgs decays to two long-lived objects, and will also sketch how this proposal can be generalized to provide a flexible and generic framework for single LLP searches. I will offer some theoretical perspectives on using the results of LLP searches and mention some future opportunities.